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Gene Kelly: A Pittsburgher in Hollywood

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Before he brought a muscular new dancing style to Hollywood
musicals, Gene Kelly was a Pitt economics major who supported himself by
pumping gas, digging ditches, and teaching at his family’s dance studios.

After graduating with a BA from Pitt in 1933, Kelly
continued teaching and performing, and he choreographed musicals at Oakland’s Pittsburgh
Playhouse and downtown Pittsburgh’s Nixon Theater. He also enrolled in Pitt’s
law school for a couple of months before dropping out to focus on his dance
career.

He landed his first Broadway job in 1938 as a dancer in Leave It to Me and his first Hollywood
acting role in 1942’s For Me and My Gal
with Judy Garland.

In 1951 Kelly starred in An
American in Paris, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture plus six
other Oscars, including an honorary one for Kelly’s “extreme versatility
as an actor, singer, director, and dancer, but specifically for his brilliant
achievement in the art of choreography.” The following year he starred in,
co-directed, and choreographed Singin' in the Rain,
widely considered the best musical film ever made.

A highly innovative perfectionist, Kelly successfully
experimented with lighting, camera movement, and special effects. With his
athletic moves and regular-guy looks, he was able to simultaneously democratize
dance and introduce the previously elitist ballet form to mainstream musicals.

Unlike the elegant Fred Astaire, whom he revered and
with whom he teamed in 1946’s Ziegfield
Follies, Kelly eschewed top hat and tails. “As a Depression kid who went to
school in very bad years, I didn’t want to move or act like a rich man,” he
once said. “I wanted to dress in a pair of jeans. I wanted to dance like the
man in the streets.”